The Relationship Between Adolescent Social Media Use And Body Self-esteem:the Effects Of Body Image Comparison And Self-concept Clarity And Their Interventions

During adolescence,appearance and the body move from the periphery of children’s concerns to the center.Adolescents who experience rapid physical changes are more likely to rely on others than themselves to evaluate their bodies and appearance,and they are highly sensitive to socially required body images.Social media platforms,with their unique advantage of being highly visual,provide the so-called perfect body image,and this unattainable body image standard gives rise to unintentional or intentional comparisons that pose a threat to individual body self-esteem,especially for adolescents who are still in the critical period of self-identity building and are compelled to seek identity are more likely to be wrapped up in this storm.What is the relationship between adolescent social media use and body self-esteem? What are the mechanisms at play?This is the concern of this study.The first study used the Intensity of Social Media Use Scale,the Body Esteem Scale for Adolescents and Adults,the Body Image Comparison Scale for Social Media Sites,and the Self-Concept Clarity Scale to conduct a questionnaire survey on 600 students in a high school to explore the relationship between social media use and body self-esteem and the effects of body image comparison and self-concept clarity.The results showed that Ⅰ.Social media use intensity was significantly and negatively related to perception of appearance dimension,weight satisfaction dimension,and social evaluation dimension in body self-esteem.Ⅱ.Social media use intensity was significantly and positively related to social media body image comparison and significantly and negatively related to self-concept clarity.Ⅲ.Social media body image comparison and self-concept clarity respectively played a mediating role in the relationship between social media use intensity and body self-esteem dimensions.Ⅳ.Social media body image comparison and self-concept clarity play a chain mediating role in the relationship between social media use intensity and body self-esteem dimensions.The second study,based on the first study,designed a group counseling program to reduce body image comparison and improve self-concept clarity in order to improve the level of body self-esteem of adolescents.Twenty students were recruited and randomly divided into experimental and control groups,and ten students in the experimental group were subjected to the intervention while the control group was left untreated to measure the effectiveness of the program.It was found that there was a significant increase in self-concept clarity and physical self-esteem of students in the experimental group,and thus the group counseling program had a certain intervention effect.This study reveals the relationship between social media use and body self-esteem and the effects of body image comparison and self-concept clarity in it,and provides a feasible group-assistance program to improve adolescents’ body self-esteem level.